In June 2014, HDD Burghfield Common Limited submitted an application for 129 dwellings at Firlands Farm in Burghfield Common. The local council refused the application in October 2014. However, the developer appealed and an amended scheme for 90 dwellings was approved by a planning inspector in July 2015. The council sought in the High Court, in West Berkshire District Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and anr [2016] EWHC 267 Admin, to challenge and quash the decision of the inspector.
At the High Court, the council argued that the inspector had wrongly treated its housing strategy and policies as “out of date”; the inspector was wrong to identify the housing need figure as 833 dwellings per year, and to treat that figure as an absolute consideration rather than one that was a relative matter of weight; and was wrong to apply no weight to the housing land supply policies and little weight to the emerging DPD. The council also ran an alternative argument that the inspector failed to give adequate reasons for his decision.
The High Court rejected all the grounds.
On ground one, the inspector was entitled to depart from the figure in the development plan as he was correct to conclude that the government’s planning aims, as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework (“NPPF”), are best achieved in the short term in West Berkshire by the adoption of this core strategy, but amended to make clear that the 10,500 housing figure is a minimum and not a ceiling and requiring a review of housing provision.
On ground two, the inspector was required to identify an annual housing requirement in the district. If he failed to do so he would not have been able to identify whether the council was able to demonstrate whether it had a five-year supply of housing land. Having rejected the core strategy figure, the inspector explained why he favoured the figure of 833 dwellings per annum “as an appropriate point in calculating a five-year housing requirement for the purposes of this appeal”.
On ground three, it was clear that the inspector dealt with all the matters that paragraph 216 of the NPPF required him to consider. The inspector considered that the proposal did not conflict with key policies in the development plan. He gave little weight to the emerging allocations DPD which is the subject of 8,000 objections and had not been the subject of independent examination. As for the suggestion that he failed to give certain policy sufficient weight, that policy was adopted 14 years ago and addressed the development needs for 1991 to 2006. The inspector was entitled to give it little weight in terms of a planning decision about development needs in 2015.
Martha Grekos is a partner and head of planning at Irwin Mitchell